Sunday, July 30, 2006

My Reference Shelf

You may have gone to Resources, my list of links to various sources of information (and timeless tracts) that are available on the web. I am a frequent visitor.

I am also a frequent visitor to the row of books that sits on a shelf above my computer. The books are arrayed roughly by subject but also (for aesthetic reasons) in "waves" by height (peak-trough-peak-through-peak). Here, from left to right, are the titles on my reference shelf (with links to editions that are available online):

The Heritage Guide to the Constitution, Edwin Meese III (chairman of the editorial advisory board)
The Oxford Guide to United States Supreme Court Decisions, Kermit L. Hall (editor)
The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations
The Great Thoughts, George Seldes (editor)
The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States of America (published by the U.S. Government Printing Office [GPO], 1972)
The Constitution of the United States of America (footnoted version "presented by" Emmanuel Celler, chairman of the Committee on the Judiciary of the U.S. House of Representatives, GPO, 1972)
Layman's Guide to Individual Rights under the United States Constitution (prepared by the Subcommittee on Constitutional Rights of the Committe on the Judiciary of the U.S. Senate, GPO, 1972)
FDR's Folly: How Roosevelt and His New Deal Prolonged the Great Depression, Jim Powell
The Law, Frederic Bastiat
The Constitution of the United States of America ("presented by" Wayne Hays, chairman of the Committee on House Administration, GPO, 1972)
The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States of America (pocket version published by Cato Institute)
The Summing Up, W. Somerset Maugham
The Great Quotations, George Seldes (editor)
The New American Roget's College Thesaurus in Dictionary Form
The Elements of Style, William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White
The Federal Reserve System: Purposes and Functions (prepared and published by the Board of Governors, 1961)
The King's English, H.W. Fowler and F.G. Fowler
A Dictionary of Modern English Usage, H.W. Fowler (revised by Sir Ernest Gowers)
Modern American Usage: A Guide, Wilson Follett
A Manual of Style, University of Chicago Press
Legal Problem Solver (a Reader's Digest compendium)
Know Your Rights (a Reader's Digest compendium)
The Timetables of History, Bernard Grun
The Statistical History of the United States: From Colonial Times to the Present (prepared by the U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1976)
Relativity Visualized, Lewis Carroll Epstein
Amo, Amas, Amat and More: How to Use Latin to Your Own Advantage and to the Astonishment of Others, Eugene Ehrlich
Dictionary of Foreign Terms, C.O. Sylvester Mawson
Webster's New World French Dictionary (concise edition)
21st Century Dictionary of Acronyms and Abbreviations, Diana Ajian (compiler)
The Complete Plain Words, Sir Ernest Gowers
Harbrace College Handbook, John C. Hodges and Mary E. Whitten
Handbook of Mathematical Tables and Formulas, Richard Stevens Burington (compiler)
A Guide to American English, L.M. Myers
Principles of Speech, Alan H. Monroe
The Macmillan Handbook of English, John M. Kierzek and Walker Gibson
The 1,911 Best Things Anybody Ever Said, Robert Byrne
The Plain English Approach to Business Writing, Edward P. Bailey Jr.
The Art of Literary Research, Richard D. Altick
The Basic Patterns of Plot, Foster-Harris
Written Words: A Literary Introduction to English Composition, Arthur Norman and Lewis Sawin

I have many other reference works in other parts of my house. Those listed above just happen to be the ones at hand. I would be grateful for suggestions about other titles that I should keep handy.